home (and variations upon)
by soaring-smiles
Summary: "I'll fix it," he tells her. The moon is grim and off-white, ghosting the sky above them. She counts the stars until she runs out of hundreds, until she is a dizzying swirl of bright lights and numbers, until he is no longer smiling, but staring at the ground under their feet. [ten/rose]


**If you've read my stories before, you probably know I like playing around with well-known tropes, so I thought I'd the give the old, 'ten and rose do domestic' a try. This was originally meant to be light-hearted. *coughs* Not so, anymore. Anyway, I quite liked this one, really, so I hope you enjoy it- even though I know it's not quite as idyllic as we like Ten and Rose's relationship to be.**

**(but really, isn't that the most interesting part?)**

* * *

He loses their home on a night in a place she doesn't know. The ground is cool and wet; the edges of her jeans are damp when they start walking.

"I'll fix it," he tells her. The moon is grim and off-white, ghosting the sky above them. She counts the stars until she runs out of hundreds, until she is a dizzying swirl of bright lights and numbers, until he is no longer smiling, but staring at the ground under their feet.

She's never been to America before- except for a bunker buried under sand, that one where she let a monster loose to play. Sometimes she dreams about that thing, that grating, mechanical voice screaming at her.

But she's not afraid of American suburbia. Not of mowed grass and pretty picket fences and school buses. They tread on smooth concrete in quiet streets, and the Doctor grips her fingers so hard they might bruise. When they find a motel, after he nearly carries her up the stairs she's so tired, she feels herself being pushed down on a scratchy bed, cheek pressed against a pillow.

"Sleep," he murmurs, and passes a hand over her hair.

The last thing she sees is him, staring out of the window at the endless black cut through with tiny blinding pinpricks. She would go to him, feel his hearts against her own, but she's already asleep.

* * *

The first week is spent looking. He is frenzied, running, sprinting past a mall and countless perfect three bedroom, two-storey houses. Rose follows, trying to catch that deep blue in all the pastel.

But they can't.

So they end up in a crumpled heap in the tiny clearing near the beginning of a tame forest. He lies next to her, reaches for her hand, tells her a story about how he lived on Earth for nearly a year.

His mouth is set hard, his eyes flinty- as if he wants her to start blaming him. But if she did that, she'd never stop. So she keeps her silence, listens to birds and trees and his slow, controlled breathing.

She thinks she's never known anyone so panicked to have such a steady pulse.

* * *

"Temporary measures," he says to her, when he buys the house. "Where else can we sleep?"

It has curtains, and a carpet, and an oven and a bed and he stares out of the window- dirty, smudged- like he's waiting for something. The grass is unnaturally green, and the neighbours murmur over a barbecue and kicked soccer balls.

Rose sits on the couch, stares blankly at the television set. She bought clothes with his stolen money- light summer dresses, things she doesn't usually wear. The hems feel strange against her bare legs.

And him- he's in jeans and a shirt. Sometimes, he leans over, and she can see the muscles and bones shifting under his skin, the way he moves. Sometimes, he looks at the way her dress slides against her thighs, cool and transparent.

She doesn't really know what to think of any of it.

* * *

Sun up. Sun down. She wakes up in tangled sheets to a white-walled room and no stars, while he goes for constant walks- coming back with grass and dirt stains on his hands.

"Temporary measures," he says, when he drives home the car. "How else are we going to get to places?"

It is silver and small, and she never learns to drive. It stays, resolute, ugly, on the driveway. He takes it away every day, and won't tell her where, or why he comes back with a hollow ache in his eyes. And quietly, she wonders where the hope draining out of him is going.

_(at night, he sleeps in the spare room, but she can hear his footsteps pacing outside her door. once, he gave in, and came to sit on the end of her bed for a bare, electric, moment)_

Rose cooks dinner, burns it, orders take-out. Judith, the one next door, she comes over sometimes, and her boys too. Rose won't ever admit it, but she likes the noise, likes the little things laughing and crying and yelling.

The Doctor looks at the children, at her, and then excuses himself.

He doesn't come back for an hour.

* * *

"Temporary measures," he says, when he accepts the job. "How else are we going to eat?"

It is, he says, a bank. She oh-so-nearly laughs, settles for anxiety instead.

"Don't leave me," she whispers to him, the last night before. He's lying on his bed, glasses hooked around his ears, book in hand. Carefully, desperately, she crawls across to him, and buries herself in his chest. He holds her so tightly, head tipped so he's kissing the top of hers.

"_Ssh_," he murmurs, but it doesn't help.

He joins the rat-race on a Wednesday morning, sticky and humid, loping down the pavement in shirtsleeves, briefcase in his hand. She curls her fingers around the hem of her dress.

She walks to the meadow close by-the one where he told her about Bessie and Jo- steps heavy, hair loose and sticking to her face. When she was a kid, she remembers, she used to braid daisies into her hair, tie anklets and bracelets, set a crown of petals on her forehead.

He makes no comment when she's late that night, merely sets a plate of pasta in front of her, and brushes the flowers from the strands of her hair, presses his mouth there instead.

"How was your day?" she asks him, and he smiles, and passes her a fork.

* * *

"I'm trying so hard," he whispers, when he opens the door to her bedroom. Shadows crawl across the floor, his eyes burning in the dark. "Oh, Rose, I'm trying _so_ hard."

He curls around her, hand resting above her heart, her pulse beating against his fingers. Her eyes flutter shut; he touches his tongue to the rise of her spine and tries to ignore the resounding emptiness drumming in his skull.

* * *

Days in, days out. Time measured in clocks, timelines shuddering out of his view. He re-paints the walls, she learns how to make roasts. On Saturday, he beats her at Monopoly, and then she falls asleep to the slow lilt of his voice reading her something she can't understand.

When he carries her to bed, she remembers him pulling a blanket over her, remembers him sinking down next to her and tracing the lines of her palms, trying to memorise her life-line.

"I'm going to find her, Rose," he tells her, when she wakes up. Sun streams through the window and sets his hair on fire. Maybe he's a little ginger after all. "And then we'll go to Barcelona. You and me."

That's the night his scanner doesn't work, the night he smashes glass and grabs her by the shoulders and bites his way into a kiss. She cuts her feet, scarlet lines trickling down her chin, from his teeth marking her mouth.

"I'm _sorry,_" he repeats, uselessly, trailing his lips across her eyelids, temples, cheeks. "I'm so sorry."

She's already a little scared of him.

* * *

He sleeps in her bed, one arm anchoring her to him. Their chests rise and fall, legs tangled together. When she dreams of Toby and the Wire, he's the one that drags her out of it.

"I want to go home," she says, sleep-drunk and bruisingly honest.

"You're a bit of mine," he admits.

He's so gentle; she thought he wouldn't be. But his touch is light; the way he moves inside her is soft. "Rose," he tells her sweat-slick skin as he presses down on her, "_Rose_, I think I-"

She remembers the sentences he hasn't said, wonders about the ones still to be interrupted.

* * *

Her period comes, blood staining the pristine sheets. She should be embarrassed; he certainly is.

It goes again, and she catches the way he looks at her.

* * *

He finds the TARDIS unexpectedly, on the drive back from work. He runs all the way to her, and tears her out of the house. They leave without a word; his hand wrapped around hers as their feet pound the ground, the night cool and starry above them.

He laughs, whoops, relieved and ecstatic. Whirls her around the console room, kisses her against the strut, and leaves her dress crumpled on the grating.

She thinks that someone will find their house, eventually, the clothes and the food, sheets, car keys. Board games and books and shampoo. Wonders who Judith and her sons will visit, now.

The temperature is perfect, as she slips into unconsciousness, the Doctor wrapped around her.

* * *

When he changes, when someone mentions homes and happy families, he laughs, says he's not playing that game. Me, he boasts, I don't even have a bedroom.

_(not anymore)_

But then he thinks of an endless summer, lost in years, so long ago now. And a girl, too, one he misses like he'd miss his left heart beating. A house left unfinished, cut short. And that secret: he couldn't bear to go back and clean up his own mess.

_(nothing changes, eh?)_

And he knows that he got it right.

_(and she is an aching ghost, drifting around inside of his head, driving knives into his memories)_

He doesn't do domestic. Not nearly well enough.


End file.
